NOV. 16, 2005Water in the West
Flow of integrated solutions could determine
the future of California water resourcesby Richard Hellmann | BC WATER NEWS
SAN FRANCISCO — Add water to the list of issues on which California is a leader, and whatever solutions percolate here in the next few years could have broad implications for the state, the country and the world.
California's relationship to its water sources is extremely fragile. Recent natural disasters, such as the infrastructure failure in the wake of the Gulf Coast hurricanes, raise questions about the state of California's levees and other hydro infrastructure.
Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, discussed the status and future of California’s water supply during a talk Nov. 16 at the Commonwealth Club.
In "California Water in the 21st Century," Nelson, co-director of the NRDC’s Western Water project and executive director of the Save San Francisco Bay Association, outlined for about 20 attendees what he sees as the next emerging era.
“The lessons we are learning in California are important, because Western water conflicts are spreading not only around the country, but around the world,” Nelson said. He quoted Ismail Serageldin, former vice president of the World Bank, who said, “The next world war will be over water.”
Today, three new factors are affecting California’s water:
• We now have more tools to meet our water needs than we had 150 years ago.
• We are becoming more aware of the human benefits of environmental restoration.
• Economics is pointing to new solutions.
More tools in the toolbox
It hasn’t been that long since building dams was considered cutting-edge technology. The engineering feat of Hoover Dam generated excitement then that now rivals the iPod. But technological innovation has created a host of better water supply tools: desalination, wastewater recycling, groundwater cleanup, low-flow showerheads, waterless urinals, irrigation systems driven by satellite data and controlled by pager systems that know not to irrigate in the rain.
“In comparison with these tools, dams simply don’t compete,” Nelson said.
For example, despite the tremendous growth in Los Angeles during the past 20 years (about 1 million people), the city essentially uses the same amount of water that it used in 1985. Technological innovation made this possible, and we’re just touching the potential, Nelson said.
Restoration isn’t just for fish
Opponents of environmental protection say that we need to prioritize “people over fish,” but restoring ecosystems has had far-reaching human benefits. Case in point: the San Joaquin River.
California’s second-longest river is dry for about 60 miles upstream from the Delta. “We’re putting a great deal of effort into restoring that river,” Nelson said. “Support for restoration has been growing dramatically in recent years as a result of the ‘human’ benefits of restoration.”
Two obvious benefits are (1) restoring flows to the San Joaquin River will be good for struggling salmon runs and (2) this, in turn, will benefit not only the Delta’s health, but fisheries that operate there.
Less obvious, but still important, benefits include:
• Recharged groundwater aquifers that are vastly overdrafted in parts of the Central Valley.
• Improved water quality, which will benefit farmers who are lower on the river and the Delta.
• Improved dissolved oxygen and community development benefits for Stockton.
• Improved lot for salmon fishermen on the North Coast.
• Improved drinking water quality for Southern California and the Bay Area “for more than 20 million Californians who drink water from the Delta and for whom Sierra snowmelt seems tastier than agricultural drainage,” Nelson said.
“Restoring the San Joaquin River is not prioritizing fish over people,” he said. “It offers benefits from one end of the state to the other. It is not obvious that restoring salmon in Fresno improves drinking water quality in San Diego and creates jobs in Eureka. But it’s true.”
California has embarked on designing integrated solutions that restore the ecosystem and provide cleaner and more reliable water supplies much cheaper than the old, damaging solutions of the past.
The next challenge
During the past century, California has invested tens of billions of dollars into its water infrastructure of dams and canals, but the largest reservoir in the state is still the Sierra snowpack. Nelson said that climate change threatens to eliminate much of that storage as we see more rain and less snow in the coming seasons. (See BC Exclusive, ‘A Delicate Balance’)
“This has the potential to cause more winter flooding and more summer shortages,” Nelson said, “which will significantly reduce the water supply from our massive existing water system.”
Yet another effect of climate change is rising sea levels. A three- to six-foot increase would be a disaster for 1,000 square miles of farmland and communities that lie behind shaky Delta levees, he said, as well as being catastrophic for water supplies in the Delta.
These are not just theoretical effects, Nelson said: The West is already seeing the loss of snowpack as temperatures rise. In the past century, sea level at the Golden Gate Bridge has risen by more than six inches.
“These factors suggest that as far as California water policy is concerned, the environmental era may be coming to an end,” Nelson said. “And it’s not over because we won, nor because we have lost, but because increasingly the right solutions are not just environmental solutions. Smart solutions work best for the environment, public health and a wide range of human needs, including those of the California economy.”
Every era in California’s water history, he said, tackles the challenges with their values, their understanding of those challenges, and the tools at hand. This new approach is captured best by the Bay Area’s Paul Hawken (author of Growing A Business), who said: “Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive, that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”
The potential future of water in California awaits those good ideas and those willing to seize the opportunities ahead.
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